


Find what you love and let it kill you

by NormaTapacu



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Slow Burn, Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 23:11:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19799704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NormaTapacu/pseuds/NormaTapacu
Summary: Can... anybody, find me somebody to love?Because love is the most important thing, that energy that moves the world and makes it a better place.I have spent all my years in believing to you.A collection of love stories from the commonwealth. Some happier than others.





	Find what you love and let it kill you

The longer he took, the more she narrowed her eyes. 

Teagan slid his gaze down the desk, not paying attention to any of the tools that were there. 

Apparently he contemplated nothing. Perhaps looking for an ingenious solution to the problem that had intrigued them for several days, and which represented a mystery for Ingram. 

In front of Teagan, a couple of blueprints were displayed with the detailed plans of the right leg of a powerarmor. The powerarmor in question hung in those moments from the chains of the station on his right, completely unusable unless they discovered why it was broken. Ingram, who had been staring at him for 20 minutes, drummed his fingers on the table. 

\- Are you going to talk at last or wait for the new year to arrive? - Ingram exclaimed, feeling very uneasy about his silence. 

Teagan's tranquility managed to exasperate her. Almost unconsciously she directed her eyes to other service stations where several more armors waited for urgent repairs. 

Because "urgent" was the word with which everyone labeled their needs. Every day, all day, Ingram only heard that word. And although she understood that all powerarmor repairs were extremely important for maximum performance in the field, she simply could not take all of them despite having the help of a handful of scribes. 

Ingram swallowed a sigh, convinced that she too was contributing to the brotherhood and, although she did not come down to the field, her work there was important. At least that was what she said herself several times a day, urging herself to continue and not give up. She suppressed the urge to sigh again and looked at Teagan. To her surprise, Teagan was watching her. 

There was something indecipherable and at the same time terribly mundane in the way he looked at her, which made Ingram feel terribly self-conscious. A blast of sultry heat spread from his lower back to his neck and from there rose to his ears and cheeks. He fought against the terrible shyness that prompted her to look down, afraid to smile foolishly at the open and intimidating way in which Teagan was looking at her. 

She, knowing what was the longing and unattainable desires, believed to see in his eyes ... something. 

Something she couldn't name with words, but at the same time seemed to resonate with something she was keeping in her chest. And that caused her fear. 

She didn’t want Teagan, or any of her brothers or sisters, to look at her that way and discover in her the deepest parts of herself. She was not ready to face her own vulnerable nature. Allowing someone to enter was the best way to allow someone to hurt her. 

So she gathered all her willpower and repressed the warm feeling by covering it with multiple layers of irritation and bad mood. She forced an annoyed grimace and looked at him in the most haughty way she could compose at that moment. 

\- I have a lot of work so I don’t have time for this, Teagan. - 

Teagan grinned, keeping eye contact on Ingram for longer than she would have liked, then lowered her head to look at the plans spread out on the work table. 

Teagan sometimes wondered why Ingram did that to herself, why she decided to turn her gaze away instead of contemplating what was there. Burying what she felt was the best way to hurt herself, because it only made her rot inside. And he knew a lot about that, because for years he hid his wounds by drinking alcohol almost daily. 

Although he didn’t regret it too much, because his best ideas had been when he was drunk. 

\- I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I have no idea what can be wrong with the plates. - 

\- The problem isn’t the plates. - Ingram snorted. - The problem is the wiring board, I don’t know what causes it to overheat and wear out. I changed the cables, replaced them with more resistant ones and covered them to prevent the heat from wearing away the plastic. But nothing seems to prevent the same thing from happening again. - 

Teagan shrugged, one of his hands caressing his short beard. 

\- It could be direct heat. A shot with a laser rifle. - 

An attempt of a smile appeared on Ingram's lips, at the same time that Teagan began to smile. 

\- Are you serious? - The smile of both was extended. Ingram stared at him for a moment with a smile and a disbelieving and at the same time amused look. - God bless you, are you serious? - 

\- Maybe someone messes up every night and sabotages your powerarmor. - 

His smile turned cloudy and something seemed to crawl behind his green eyes, darkening them. Ingram didn’t notice that, inside his mind began to take shape the scene of a stranger slipping stealthily into the repair bay. 

The whole thing suddenly seemed so ridiculous to her, that she threw her head back and laughed. Teagan looked at her smiling as well. The laughter had made Ingram's cheeks color with a delicate pink volume that favored her. When she laughed, Teagan thought, she looked so young. 

\- And that person has so much dedication to do it every day for two weeks? - She asked. 

\- Stranger things have been seen in the wasteland, what are you surprised about? - 

Ingram leaned toward him, a wide smile adorning her lips and colored cheeks. Unconsciously she reached out a hand and planted it on his chest, trying to suppress her laughter. 

\- If our brothers had such dedication, we would have won this war long ago. - 

Teagan smiled softly as an intimidating light crackled in his eyes. He looked down at the hand that Ingram kept lightly pressed against his chest. 

\- It's a posibility. - 

He whispered, as he looked up and focused on hers. For a second Ingram saw in his eyes something that seemed to scream at her, a secret confession that she couldn’t understand at all but that hit her with devastating force. Ingram removed his hand from his chest, with a convulsive movement, as if it had suddenly burned him. 

A thick silence settled over them as they continued to look at each other, both surprised for different reasons. She wanted him to stop looking at her with that intensity, so she could regain control of herself. And she could not move until, whatever Teagan was thinking, faded in his eyes. 

When he looked away, Ingram felt liberated, but also deeply disturbed. She cleared her throat, moving away enough to fully regain control of herself. 

\- You have too much imagination. - She said, fighting to sound normal. 

In recent weeks a constant idea was hitting her mind over and over again. At first it had only been a slight occurrence, something you ask yourself out of simple curiosity. But as the days accumulated and increased the number of times she had to meet with Teagan, that slight idea was gaining so much strength that it became an obsessive thought. 

What would happen if one day she dared to lean towards Teagan and …? 

_"NO!!"_ a voice shouted inside her head. Each and every time the question had arisen she had silenced him, afraid of the vulnerability that made her feel. She told herself that she didn’t want answers, because as long as nothing happened, nothing could hurt her. If she gave in, if she was weak and let it happen there was a possibility that they would reject her, and she couldn’t stand a rejection. 

\- I'll change the cables again. - She said and by some miracle her voice sounded firm and clean. 

Teagan looked at her and their eyes met. He didn’t look at her as intensely as before, but there was a deep feeling of affection in the back of his eyes that made her smile again. 

\- I'll ask Quinlan to check the design, maybe he finds something. - He offered. 

\- That will help, - She accepted. - I'm thinking of putting a thermal paste coating on the cables to protect them. - 

They both nodded in silence and Ingram turned around to leave. 

Teagan watched her leave while letting her thoughts slide out of that bay and fly freely to another direction. Sometimes it was about convincing himself to stop everything and simply confess to Ingram what he had been doing, the way he felt and his reasons for acting that way. 

But he doubted. He always doubted. And he yielded again and again, and he was wrong again and again. 

He gave one last look at the blueprint on the table and went to his place of work.

# \- o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - 

The shift change was made at 10pm, after a light dinner for those who began their shift. Most of those who entered did so with low spirits. For them, and for the great majority, the night shift was the heaviest. There was nothing interesting going on at night, there were no search parties, no assault groups to clear locations. All the active squadrons returned to the airport at night, or camped nearby to spend the night, and the activity was practically nil.

Even the scribes, who could spend all day between books and technical manuals, didn’t resist to doze during the night shift. 

Those who finished the shift and retired to rest also did so with their spirits down, very tired after an arduous day doing maintenance, search or collection activities. 

Teagan made the change of shift as he did every day, and as was his custom he stayed another hour to carry out an inventory of the warehouse. He reviewed a few reports while noticing that activity within the Prydwen was starting to go down. 

At 11:45 he finally got up from the terminal. The scribe who took the night shift in the warehouse had already been nodding in a corner for a while. Teagan made sure the boy didn’t notice and left the warehouse. On his back he carried his laser rifle, secured with a sturdy and easily removable leather strap. 

Upon entering the repair bay he was pleased to see that the place was practically deserted. There was only one knight totally engaged in his affairs and in the background he listened to a couple of voices talking discreetly. 

Teagan approached the powerarmor he and Ingram had been arranging that morning. He squatted in front of it, pulled a screwdriver from his pocket and slid it between the joints of the metal plate that protected the knee to be able to remove it. He swept the freshly laid thermal paste with his finger and raised his laser rifle. 

He only hesitated a second, as he always did since he began sabotaging that powerarmor. He knew he was acting like an immature teenager, using the old strategy of pulling the girl's braids to get her attention. What he was doing was petty and he knew that Ingram would feel terribly betrayed if she came to find out what he was doing. 

But he also told himself that he was not really hurting anyone and that all he did was steal some of Ingram's time. 

He sighed deeply. 

And pulled the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can see art related to history in this link: https://rusembell.tumblr.com/post/186273038787/ingram-and-teagan-a-little-of-the-daily-life-of


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